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Screenplay Guidelines and Tips prepared by Janaki Cedanna What is a story? Too often short films writers resort to creating a situation, instead of a story. In a situation, a stock character tackles with a problem for several minutes without success. A final twist provides the resolution of his troubles –often through no action of his own. The character is often unchanged by his experiences. In a story, a character must want something more than anything in the world. The hero must overcome obstacles that create some kind of conflict for him. He must find ways to resolve his predicament. The hero either succeeds or doesn’t. In the process, the hero of the story learns something, and is forever changed by his experiences. Those dramatic elements make a story compelling to watch. Is a short film easier to write than a long one? Yes and no. On the one hand, a short script is more manageable to write than a typical feature length screenplay, which is between 110-120 pages long. A short script is about one-twelfth of that. The cast of the short film is often limited to two or three main characters, often less fleshed out than in a feature film. The plot of a short screenplay is linear and uncomplicated by the subplots of the longer form. So in this sense, yes, the short script is easier to write. On the other hand, you still have to tell a story and you have only 5 minutes to do the following: -Grab your audience’s attention. -Set up the location, style and mood of your film. -Create believable characters –a main one, and an antagonist. The main character must want something as if his life depended on it, and will have trouble achieving/getting it. This is called conflict. -Deliver a satisfying ending. And all this within five minutes! You can do it! First, you need to have an idea. Where do I find an idea to write? Use as a starting point something that captures your imagination or unlocks a powerful emotional reaction. It could be, for instance: -A person (friend, acquaintance, family member, celebrity) so intriguing you cannot get him out of your mind -A snippet of dialogue exchanged between two strangers on a bus ride across the States -A chapter of family lore passed down over generations –like what happened to your great-uncle the first time he got his hair cut -An outlandish article in the Enquirer Prepared by Janaki Cedanna, FMP 300 Spring 2010 1 Screenplay Guidelines and Tips prepared by Janaki Cedanna -The color of the ocean on a stormy day -The mournful sound of a train whistle at night -A troubling image in a dream you had a long time ago, but has stayed with you -A situation that made you laugh -An abstract concept (intolerance, loneliness, poverty) What you are looking for is a powerful creative trigger, an event that struck you in one way or another, and you want to write about it. When you explore your options for a story idea, always focus on how you feel about it. It’s that FEELING, that EMOTION that are important. Fear, anger, a desire for revenge, a sense of thrill or elation, all are powerful engines behind the desire to write. What you write about has to matter to YOU. If you are not passionate about what you want to tell, you will not be able to make other people care, either. I have my idea. How do I turn it into a story? Once you have found the creative trigger for your story, play a game of “What if?” with it. Playing “What if” allows you to explore all the possible dramatic situations that can develop from the original idea. It is what professional writers call “Brainstorming”. The important rule is that you pay attention to the choice you make when you answer the “What if?” question. Each answer is a choice you make. That choice will determine the next question. Your narrative will start developing in a specific direction. Little by little, the image you started with will be transformed through the decisions you make. Your goal is to come up with the most interesting, dramatic situation possible. Brainstorming Brainstorming using “What if” allows you to commit to certain characters (to their appearance, values, behavior), to certain events that lead to other events (plot), and to a point-of-view. Your main characters. As you play “What if?” you make important discoveries about your hero (their physical appearance, attitude toward life, main goal), create other characters, and imagine their relationships with each other. A plot and a dramatic moment You have determined a logical series of events, or plot, for your story. The fulcrum of your story is the most dramatic moment. It is the point around which the rest of your story is constructed. It is the moment where the circumstances you imagined intersect with your character’s urgent need. A point of view If a homeless man is your main character, and when you played “What If” you could have decided that the more interesting story was that of the homeless man. In this case, Prepared by Janaki Cedanna, FMP 300 Spring 2010 2 Screenplay Guidelines and Tips prepared by Janaki Cedanna the choices you would have made would have been different and the story told from his point of you. You would have told a different kind of story. What makes a good story for a short film? Compelling characters. The temptation when you write a short film, and have less time to develop complex characters, is to write your characters in short-hand. If their behavior is simplistic and predictable, your story will be, too. Characters, particularly your hero’s, is the force that drives your story. Do not shortchange your characters! Give them the full range of human characteristics: • Physical: the character’s height, weight, gender, age, clothes they wear can all influence how your story develops. • Behavioral: there can be unexpected contrast between expected behavior and actual behavior (for instance, a psychiatrist who is obsessively re-arranging the pens on his desk). This disconnect between what is expected and the actual behavior of the character is immediately intriguing –and often humorous. • A strong need: Character is ACTION. An action is what the character DOES in order to get what he WANTS. Energize your story by making the hero’s need extreme. What the character wants, he wants passionately. He wants it more than anything in the world. The need of the character must be immediate and urgent, especially in a short film. The element of conflict. Conflict is the result of what a character “want” (his goal), and the obstacles he must face to get what he wants. Those obstacles can be another character, nature, society, community. Those are called external obstacles. Sometimes, the obstacles are purely internal –an addiction, psychological issues resulting from a trauma, for instance. Watching the hero struggle against those obstacles is what makes a story interesting. Your job is to make the life of you character difficult! The character says: “I want this!” Say “NO!” to your character! In the famous short film The Lunch Date, the worst possible obstacle for this wealthy, bigoted, hungry woman takes the shape of a homeless man eating her lunch. The more you intensify the pressure on your hero, the more fun it will be for the audience to watch your movie. Can you tell your story “in pictures”? Films are a visual medium. The best stories are the one that you can tell with images that have a strong dramatic impact. This is not always easy: to be understood by your audience, some stories require a lot of exposition. Exposition is the essential information that you need to reveal to your audience for them to be able to understand the plot. There are two types of information that are the most challenging to reveal. Both deal with the “hidden” aspects of your characters’ lives. Prepared by Janaki Cedanna, FMP 300 Spring 2010 3 Screenplay Guidelines and Tips prepared by Janaki Cedanna The first type of exposition deals with the Backstory of your characters: events that took place before the movie begins, but have a direct impact on what is about to take place. How do you make Backstory information immediate? It can be done with simple visual details that tell us instantly all we need to know about the action of the character before the story opens. In The Lunch Date, a short film by Adam Davidson, the movie opens with a lady carrying shopping bags from expensive New York department stores through Grand Central Station. This is a visual shortcut, which rapidly conveys the fact that this is a wealthy woman who spent her day shopping in the city, without ever having to show this. The second type of exposition that is often difficult to handle deals with the internal life of your characters - emotions, thoughts, feelings. In this case, the challenge is to make that information concrete and visible to the audience. Character behavior, or a potent visual can economically externalize all the audience needs to know to participate in the story. You can make dramatic situations so well set-up that dialogue is unnecessary. Show, don’t tell! Structuring your story A story, any story, has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In a feature film, each part has a specific function: you have about 30 minutes of Exposition (the beginning) to introduce the characters and their world.

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